THE WEEK AHEAD

We are at the beginning of another week again. We are entering the last week of January and Thursday will mark the beginning of February, infamous for some of Boston's biggest snowstorms ever. Will it happen this year? I honestly don't know. Long range forecasts look great concerning the temperatures as it now looks like this cold air will persist right through the entire month. We are leaving January and Boston sits with less than one inch of snow for the month and 1.5" for the entire season. That is truly amazing from the viewpoint of a climatologist and statistics maniac. I can tell you one thing, I think it will be very hard to get to normal snowfall this year as we would need 40" within the next two months basically. I know we can get snow into April, but we usually don't.

Will this week bring any snow? Yes is the short answer. Where is the next question. Tomorrow night the Cape and Islands will see some ocean effect snow which I detailed below in the next post with a snowfall accumulations map. Thereafter, cold air will filter into our area again with high back into the 20's for Tuesday and Wednesday. We will moderate into the low 30's late week and with the "warmup" a storm is forecasted to move into our area from the SW. Right now the GFS is taking this as an inland runner, actually tracking right over ORH and southern NH. This track would give much of SNE a mostly rain event. How much would that stink. We get so cold that the NW flow surpresses the storms to our south and east and then the trough axis moves far enough into the Midwest that the storm is allowed to develop in the OV and track along the Appalachians and we will be too warm for any snow. That would be awful to say the least and I would surely issue a "Suicide Watch" on Eastern Weather Forums for east coasters looking for the first big one of the season.

One thing on our side is the UKMET is giving this storm a much colder track that would mean mostly or all snow for SNE. UKMET was solid on the storm that missed us yesterday and Thursday last week when the GFS was giving us a monster about six days out. I wouldn't trust the GFS yet as this winter it has had a horrendous track record. If anything, the UKMET has been doing much better and should be followed by more. Time will tell. We need this one.